Heaven, by C.S. Lewis

David McKee is an interesting gentleman whom I have mentioned before. I wrote here -


David is a remarkable gentleman in his 80s whom I see sometimes in the sauna at the local swimming pool and leisure centre. Only recently did he cease cycling the five miles from Donaghadee to come to the leisure centre.




An ordained Presbyterian Minister with a Swiss wife, David served for many years in the town of Twann in the canton of Berne (see here). David speaks German with a Swiss accent but he conducted his preaching and pastoral work in High German (the literary language). Thus he was able to address conferences in Germany and be understood.

Before that, David tells me, he served as a missionary in Gujarat, India (an area where the Irish Presbyterian Church has a long history of mission work). David learned Hindi and even became head of Hindi teaching at the school for foreign missionaries.

A few days ago I saw David again and our discussion turned to consider Heaven. Thereupon I told David this anecdote which concerned a meeting in Oxford shortly after the Second World War between David Bleakley CBE (born 1925) and C.S. Lewis (1898-1963). Bleakley was a student at Oxford (on a Ruskin College scholarship from the Belfast shipyard) while Lewis was a University don.

In the version which appears here." title="here.">here, Bleakley writes in a church magazine -

'To the end of his days Lewis regarded Co Down as his homeland. My own memories of C. S. Lewis go back to student days in Oxford in the late 1940s and 50s. Our first encounter was in a student café in Oxford's Cornmarket. Recognising my accent, he introduced himself and very soon we were aware that we shared many common roots, especially Strandtown, Belmont [suburbs of Belfast-Ed] and St Mark's Church.

..…On one of our walks (he asked) what was my idea of Heaven. I tried hard to put some definition together, but he soon interrupted my theological meanderings. "My friend, you are far too complicated; an honest Ulsterman living in Oxford should know better. Surely, David, Heaven is Oxford lifted and placed in the middle of the Co Down."

HEAVEN IS OXFORD LIFTED AND PLACED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE COUNTY DOWN!

We used that quotation in the C.S. Lewis Trail Brochure - see here.

That story first appeared in print in Bleakley's autobiography, 'Peace in Ireland: Two States, One People' (Mowbray, 1995). In that book Bleakley continues -


'Nor bad, not bad indeed. I am sorry that I was not then better prepared to appreciate this true son of my native country, but ever since I have become aware of how much C.S. Lewis 'country' we have to explore in Northern Ireland. Lewis left an enduring and much appreciated mark on all who knew him and I was no exception. Years later I felt a fellow feeling when Simon Barrington-Ward, Bishop of Coventry, shared with me the joy he felt on discovering that he, Simon, had been given a mention in one of his hero's books.

As a young Chaplain, Barrington-Ward got to know Lewis at Cambridge. Cambridge created a chair in Medieval and Renaissance English specially for Lewis. So that for the closing years of his life Lewis left his beloved Oxford and became a Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge, .

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